2000-2025: Reap The Whirlwind

The Era Of Extreme Weather

",,,As it gets hotter, summer heat waves become longer, hotter, and more widespread. Dry areas tend to dry out faster and to stay that way for longer periods. The extra heat puts more water into the atmosphere, and that causes wet areas to become wetter and annual rainfall to become more intense, which, coupled with earlier snowmelt, leads to more flooding. And hurricanes, which feed on warm seas and atmospheric moisture, become more intense.

"...In July 2003 the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) cataloged a number of extreme events: Switzerland had experienced the hottest June in 'at least the past 250 year,' and the United States had suffered 562 tornadoes in May, exceeding the previous record of 399 in June 1992...The WMO, an 'organisation that is not given to hyperbole,' noted, 'New record extreme events occur every year somewhere on the globe, but in recent years the number of such extremes have been increasing.' Since that WMO report, Europe has experienced even more extreme events, including an extended heat wave that caused more than 35,000 deaths in August 2003.

"In 2005 the weather became even more hellish. The year was the hottest in recorded history, according to NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies. In September the Arctic had the smallest amount of sea-ice cover ever recorded by satellites.

"The extremes of wet and dry are astounding. While southern Louisiana was deluged with rain in the summer of 2005, a record-smashing U.S. hurricane season, 'the eight months since October1, 2005,' were its driest 'in 111 years of record-keeping,' the National Climatic Data Center reported in July 2006. While in 2005 much of the Northeast drowned in the wettest October in recorded history, the United States as a whole had its worst wildfire season."

2000-2025: Reap The Whirlwind

"...Hurricanes can get much, much bigger than we have so far seen in the Atlantic. The most intense Pacific storm on record was Super Typhoon Tip in 1979, which reached maximum sustained winds of 190 mph near the center. On its wide rim, gale-force winds (39 mph) extended over a diameter of an astonishing 1,350 miles. It would have covered nearly half the continental United States.

"No wonder ABC News reported in 2006 that hurricane scientists are considering adding a category 6 for hurricanes above 175 miles per hour. Ultimately, they may become common.

"...Warmth will spread over wider swaths of the ocean...we've already seen that in the first known tropical cyclone in the South Atlantic (2004) and the first known tropical cyclone to strike Spain (2005). That means we will probably see stronger hurricanes farther north along the U.S. Atlantic coast in the coming decades.

"More intense storms will be seen earlier and later in the season. The 2005 hurricane season was the most striking example of that trend, with Emily, 'the earliest-forming Category 5 hurricane on record in the Atlantic' in July, and Zeta, the longest-lived tropical cyclone to form in December and cross over into the next year, where it became the longest-lived January tropical cyclone. Whe have already seen a statistically significant increase in the length of the average hurricane season over the last several decades, according to a 2006 analysis."

The Electrifying Solution

"...As soon as California began to deregulate in the mid-1990s, utilities cut their efficiency funding in half, causing electricity usee per capita to rise....

"...Normally, public utility commissions require a lot of spare capacity to ensure that the juice keeps flowing to consumers during the kind of rare long-lasting and widespread heat waves that drive summer air-conditioning demands to extreme levels. Most of the time that spare 'peak demand' capacity goes unused, making it relatively unprofitable for companies to maintain. But by the late 1990s, global warming was making those once rare mammoth heat waves commonplace (and in 2006, California would suffer its worst heat wave ever, blanketing the state in 100F temperature for weeks, killing more than one hundred people and sending electricity demand soaring).

"Moreover, California imports a great deal of electricity. In the 1990s, the state failed to anticipate that the rapid growth of neighboring states meant that when the demand crunch came, those imports would dry up. With demand growing faster than expected and supply slowing down, with summers getting hotter and power surpluses shrinking...

"The crisis hit in 1999 and 2000, with shortages and blackouts...."

Global

USA

Siberia?

NASA study.

Increasing wildfires are said to correlate with global warming.

Scroll down to fire whirl

Compared to map of USA

@

Table-impacts compared to temperature increases.

Unstoppable Global Warming

Every 1,500 Years

by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery



Discusses evidence that there is a moderate cycle of warming and cooling that is superimposed on the ice age/interglacial rhythm. Cycle tied to the sun.

Think that the Modern Warming period may persist for a few more centuries. Commented that it is not-as of yet-as warm as the Medieval warm period.

List: Roman Warm period, Dark Ages cool period, Medieval Warm period, Little Ice Age, Modern Warm period.

U.N. Report Sees New Pollution Threat For discussion purposes...

Originally Posted by NY Times

BEIJING — A noxious cocktail of soot, smog and toxic chemicals is blotting out the sun, fouling the lungs of millions of people and altering weather patterns in large parts of Asia, according to a report released Thursday by the United Nations.

The byproduct of automobiles, slash-and-burn agriculture, wood-burning kitchen stoves and coal-fired power plants, these plumes of carbon dust rise over southern Africa, the Amazon basin and North America. But they are most pronounced in Asia, where so-called atmospheric brown clouds are dramatically reducing sunlight in many Chinese cities and leading to decreased crop yields in swaths of rural India, say a team of more than a dozen scientists who have been studying the problem since 2002.

This is not really all that 'new'. One might divide human pollution into two catagories. Generally invisible greenhouse gasses trap heat radition in the atmosphere, and cause warming. Larger more complex soot particles cause cloud formation, reflect light back into the sky, causing 'global dimming' which yields a net cooling effect.

There are some who propose increased soot release so that global dimming's cooling effects counter global warming's heat. Alas, cooling caused by soot and clouds reduces light required to grow crops. Sooty releases are also a health problem. For decades developed western countries have required scrubbers on factory stacks to reduce sooty emissions. Developing countries like China and India are likely to soon follow suit. Humanitarian values aside, the health costs of the sooty emissions will force it.

There will be side effects to that too. The soot will fall out of the air fairly quickly, and the global dimming effect will no longer be present to counter the global warming. It seems easier and more cost effective to attack the soot side of the pollution problem first, but if soot is cut without cutting greenhouse as well, the warming problem gets worse.

I'll note in passing that volcanoes contribute to both greenhouse and soot. One expects a few cool winters after large soot releasing eruptions. While volcanoes do emit CO2, they are known primarily for a cooling dimming effect, not as greenhouse contributors.

So.... this isn't really new, but it is getting worse and folks are taking note. Expect Asian governments to start pushing soot scrubber technology. The West has been doing it for years.

Originally Posted by TimWalker

Unstoppable Global Warming

Every 1,500 Years

by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery



Discusses evidence that there is a moderate cycle of warming and cooling that is superimposed on the ice age/interglacial rhythm. Cycle tied to the sun.

Think that the Modern Warming period may persist for a few more centuries. Commented that it is not-as of yet-as warm as the Medieval warm period.

List: Roman Warm period, Dark Ages cool period, Medieval Warm period, Little Ice Age, Modern Warm period.

Fred Singer is a climate change denier. Interestingly enough, he used to work with my Dad and come over to my house when I was a little girl. I used to love to sit on his lap and play with his beard. I would have been around 4 or 5.

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

Fred Singer is a climate change denier. Interestingly enough, he used to work with my Dad and come over to my house when I was a little girl. I used to love to sit on his lap and play with his beard. I would have been around 4 or 5.

Funny how "climate change denier" carries the same pejorative sense as "heretic" in these kinds of posts. One of the core assumptions of the book is that climate change is real. Its central thesis is that non-anthropogenic drivers of climate change are more potent than anthropogenic ones. This is an important point, as an emphasis on greenhouse gas emissions (over which humans have some measure of control) can lead people to believe that tighter controls on such emissions will "solve" the global warming problem, when they will not. In practice, emissions will decline as fossil fuels become scarce and people transition to alternative energy sources. That facet of the problem is therefore self-limiting and will correct itself in due time. The non-anthropogenic drivers (e.g., fluctuating solar output) will continue to operate, however, driving global temperatures higher over the next few centuries, forcing the human race to adapt to a new climate regime no matter what. By stressing the factors over which we have some control, we are downplaying the ones over which we don't, and thereby fooling ourselves into believing global warming is a process we can actually halt or even reverse. Our culture should take as its default position that climate change is inevitable and proceed from there, devising ways to adapt to the new milieu rather than fantasizing about how to prevent it.

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

By stressing the factors over which we have some control, we are downplaying the ones over which we don't, and thereby fooling ourselves into believing global warming is a process we can actually halt or even reverse. Our culture should take as its default assumption that climate change is inevitable and proceed from there, devising ways to adapt to the new milieu rather than fantasizing about how to prevent it.

Unfortunately, the Prophet generation is for all intents and purposes incapable of accepting the fact that they do not constitute the lynch-pin of reality. Consequently, they seem to violently resist having their eyes opened to their own impotence. Rather the world and everything in it crumble around them than that they be forced to humble themselves before their own insignificance.

The only high point is that the current crop of them will soon be fading from the stage, making it easier to start trying to get one's head around things as they actually are, rather than persisting in the struggle over creating a narrative to fits someone's sense of self-worth.

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

Funny how "climate change denier" carries the same pejorative sense as "heretic" in these kinds of posts. One of the core assumptions of the book is that climate change is real. Its central thesis is that non-anthropogenic drivers of climate change are more potent than anthropogenic ones. This is an important point, as an emphasis on greenhouse gas emissions (over which humans have some measure of control) can lead people to believe that tighter controls on such emissions will "solve" the global warming problem, when they will not. In practice, emissions will decline as fossil fuels become scarce and people transition to alternative energy sources. That facet of the problem is therefore self-limiting and will correct itself in due time. The non-anthropogenic drivers (e.g., fluctuating solar output) will continue to operate, however, driving global temperatures higher over the next few centuries, forcing the human race to adapt to a new climate regime no matter what. By stressing the factors over which we have some control, we are downplaying the ones over which we don't, and thereby fooling ourselves into believing global warming is a process we can actually halt or even reverse. Our culture should take as its default position that climate change is inevitable and proceed from there, devising ways to adapt to the new milieu rather than fantasizing about how to prevent it.

There are natural causes of global temperature fluctuation. The sun moves into and out of galactic arms. Continents drift. The tilt of the Earth's axis shifts. The Earth's orbit changes. The sun waxes and wanes. Plants scrub carbon out of the atmosphere, and deposit it in the Earth as oil and gas. Volcanoes belch warming gasses and cooling soot. All of these things are real. They change the Earth's climate, very very slowly.

We are reversing millions of years worth of carbon shift from the atmosphere to the ground in a matter of centuries. Before said shifts, we had global jungle. It was warm enough that fur and warm blood didn't grant mammals a significant advantage over reptiles.

Since the long slow carbon scrubbing completed, and the continents drifted into positions where both poles have a chance of freezing, axial and orbital shifts have caused ice ages to come and go. We think a middle 'interglacial' configuration is 'normal.' A little cooler than 'normal', glaciers begin to build, and we have an ice age. A small shift causes glaciers. Glacers cause a large shift. The shift is more binary than analog. A small nudge causes a large quantum shift. A little warmer than 'normal', the poles and tundra thaw, and we're in global jungle mode. Again, a small nudge causes a large state change. There isn't a lot of room for error in maintaining 'normal.'

If one looks at the fossil record, one finds some massive extinctions when one transitions between cold, middle and hot modes. While the forces that induce major transitions move with glacial slowness (or slower), the transitions themselves can be quite sudden. Crossing certain tipping points is a big deal.

As far as I can tell, human forcing factors to this point have been a much smaller factor than the poles melting would be. Once the poles melt, they will stay melted for quite some time. Sure, the continents will drift, the sun will move into a galactic arm, the Earth's axis will shift, the orbits will change, and plants will slowly make coal and oil again. Things will correct.

Call me a conservative, though. I kinda like normal. I'm fond of the interglacial. Sure, the human race is flexible. We can migrate towards the poles. We can shift our crops to newly favorable growing locations. It's just that all that will be ugly. If we can avoid the worst of it, I would rather.

The poles are nigh on melting already. The tundra is too close to burping methane for my comfort. It is likely enough that action to cut CO2 is futile. We might already be over critical tipping points. Global jungle might be a done deed.

But I'd as soon continue to fight. Call me conservative.

From the UK:

The world has never seen such freezing heat

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/m.../16/do1610.xml

By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 16/11/2008



A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.
A sudden cold snap brought snow to London in October
This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.


So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.


The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.
A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.


If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change. (He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.)


Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.
Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising "very much faster" than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.


Dr Pachauri, a former railway engineer with no qualifications in climate science, may believe what Dr Hansen tells him. But whether, on the basis of such evidence, it is wise for the world's governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

From the UK:

The world has never seen such freezing heat

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/m.../16/do1610.xml

By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 16/11/2008

Oops. Is this guy's face red (blue?) or what?

First snow of the season! Woot!

We had a fairly warm last couple weeks after a frost at the end of October (clouds rolled in and kept us nice and insulated). But winter decided to come last night. They're calling for pretty much nonstop snow until Saturday.

This last weekend, we took some friends' advice and went out to both draw down our reserves of cash and to take advantage of the big discounts stores are offering; we've been meaning to for two years now, but finally just now equipped ourselves with ski and skating gear. And they're saying this will be a good season.

You guys, if the earth really isn't warming, why are businessmen rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of an ice-free Artic Ocean and plotting out new Northern Passage routes?

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

You guys, if the earth really isn't warming, why are businessmen rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of an ice-free Artic Ocean and plotting out new Northern Passage routes?

They were also rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of continuing to pump out McMansions. And rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of profiteering off $120/bl oil. And rubbing their hands with glee over getting into the 'next Internet start-up IPO' back in 2000. And so on.

Businessmen as a group are no less ignorant than the rest of us.

China Hints at Climate Strategy in Los Angeles For discussion purposes...

Originally Posted by NY Times

Reduced to its essence, China and other developing nations want infusions of both capital and technology from the developed world to help them cut emissions. “Step up the transfer of technology,” Mr. Gao said.

By all accounts, China has a lot of cash reserve. I'm not so sure about the cash. Making technology available makes sense, though.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science...lem/index.html

updated 2 hours, 13 minutes ago

Drought parches much of the U.S., may get worse

* Story Highlights
* Over the past three years a drought has affected large swaths of the U.S.
* Report: At least 36 states expect to face water shortages within the next five years
* Experts say main causes are rapid population growth and unwise farming practices
* Marjorye Heeney, 83, remembers the Dust Bowl storms of the 1930s in Oklahoma

By John Blake
CNN


(CNN) -- Marjorye Heeney knew something was wrong when she saw a bulging cloud of black dust darken the sky.
Drought-like conditions dried this Kern River bed last year near Bakersfield, California.

She then heard an eerie, train-like whistle as fierce winds rattled her front door and windows. When she looked outside, hordes of grasshoppers and crows swarmed over her father's barren farm. After the storm broke, her father walked outside and muttered curses as he scanned the horizon for rain clouds.

"I can remember my dad just watching the sky so closely," Heeney says. "A sprinkle would excite him so much."

That's how Heeney, now 83, describes growing up on an Oklahoma farm during the Dust Bowl storms in the 1930s. For much of that decade, "black blizzards" -- formed by a prolonged drought and poor farming techniques -- ravaged much of the nation.

Now a new generation of Americans is again anxiously looking to the sky. Drought has returned to the United States, and some warn that more tough days are ahead.

The value of water is starting to become apparent in America. Over the past three years a drought has affected large swaths of the country, and conflicts over water usage may become commonplace in the future, climatologists say.

"Our focus is oil, but the critical need for water is going to make water the most significant natural resource that we're going to have to worry about in the future," says Larry Fillmer, executive director of the Natural Resources Management & Development Institute at Auburn University in Alabama.

At least 36 states expect to face water shortages within the next five years, according to a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. According to the National Drought Mitigation Center, several regions in particular have been hit hard: the Southeast, Southwest and the West. Texas, Georgia and South Carolina have suffered the worst droughts this year, the agency said.

Yet most people don't need a federal agency to tell them there's a water shortage. Plenty of cities have implemented water bans while state squabbles over water usage are common in some regions. What may surprise people, though, are the causes for the recent drought.

It's not global warming, some climatologists say. The droughts are caused by rapid population growth and unwise agricultural choices.

John R. Christy, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, says the last three years have been drier than usual in many parts of the United States, but overall there's been no shortage of rainfall. He says the U.S. mainland experienced worse droughts in the 12th and 16th centuries.

"The demand for water has gone up," Christy says. "The demand has skyrocketed in places like California and New Mexico because they've tried to grow crops in deserts."

Even drought conditions in the Southeast can't be blamed on a shortage of rainfall, Christy says. The region's water delivery systems can't keep pace with the growth, he says.

"The rain is still falling, but you're out of water because the storage facilities are not big enough," Christy says.

There's also a public perception that ordinary people are wasting more water, but that's not true, says Mark Svoboda, a climatologist with the National Drought Mitigation Center.

"Per capita use of water is down because we're learning to be more efficient," Svoboda says.

Water shortages don't have to remain a fact of modern life, drought experts say. Many offer the same solutions: Build better water delivery systems to accommodate population growth, develop more efficient uses of irrigation, and shift agriculture from the West to the East where it's easier and cheaper to water crops.

Svoboda believes a change in attitude is even more vital than changing habits.

"We take water for granted," he says. "We think it's a cheap commodity that's always going to be there."

Heeney, the Dust Bowl survivor, doesn't appear to need that lesson. She remembers how precious water was in the 1930s when people fetched water in buckets. And when the rains finally ended the Dust Bowl, she vividly remembers her joyous father driving his family out into his fields just to watch the water settle into the soil.
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Heeney, who now lives in Topeka, Kansas, gets upset when she sees people throw away bottled water or use too much water to wash their cars.

"We don't value water and we're going to regret it," Heeney says. "We forget. We're as dumb as we can be and we don't learn."

Spiked French Government Report: limited future for electric cars

Originally Posted by The Financial Times

President Nicolas Sarkozy would dearly like to end France’s rotating presidency of the European Union on a high note by brokering this week a deal on a grand European response to global warming and energy efficiency. The ultimate plan is to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent with member states at the same time drawing their future energy needs from clean renewable sources by the same percentage amount. Under the circumstances, it is no surprise that the automobile industry has found itself at the heart of the climate change debate.

Indeed, Mr Sarkozy’s own government commissioned months ago one of France’s leading energy experts – Jean Syrota, the former French energy industry regulator – to draw up a report to analyse all the options for building cleaner and more efficient mass-market cars by 2030. The 129-page report was completed in September to coincide with the Paris motor show. But the government has continued to sit on it and seems reluctant to ever publish it.

Yet all those who have managed to glimpse at the document agree that it makes interesting reading. It concludes that there is not much future in the much vaunted developed of all electric-powered cars. Instead, it suggests that the traditional combustion engine powered by petrol, diesel, ethanol or new biofuels still offers the most realistic prospect of developing cleaner vehicles. Carbon emissions and fuel consumption could be cut by 30-40 per cent simply by improving the performance and efficiency of traditional engines and limiting the top speed to about 170km/hr. Even that is well above the average top speed restriction in Europe, with the notable exception of Germany. New so-called “stop and start” mechanisms can produce further 10 per cent reductions that can rise to 25-30 per cent in cities. Enhancements in car electronics as well as the development of more energy efficient tyres, such as Michelin’s new “energy saver” technology, are also expected to help reduce consumption and pollution.

Overall, the Syrota report says that adapting and improving conventional engines could enhance their efficiency by an average of 50 per cent. It also argues that new-generation hybrid cars combining conventional engines with electric propulsion could provide an interesting future alternative.

My suspicion is that in addition to the concerns raised by this report there are real questions about the long-term durability of these motors as well as about the durability, scability, and replacement cost of the batteries.

Originally Posted by Linus

My suspicion is that in addition to the concerns raised by this report there are real questions about the long-term durability of these motors as well as about the durability, scability, and replacement cost of the batteries.

Not just that; there's also the fact that batteries are full of all sorts of nasty stuff. Plus they're not, like, pooped out by unicorns -- there's the whole mess of manufacturing them, too. Which is far from eco-friendly.

You wonder how the unicorn balls compare and contrast with buffalo ones deep fried for appetizers, and snacks.